One Secret Night Read Online Free PDF Page B

opinion?”
    “No, not that. If anything, you probably described my father to a tee. I suppose that coming to terms with everything, losing him as suddenly as we did, I had briefly lost sight of that. I still want to know why he never told me about our mother, though.”
    “Is tomorrow soon enough for that?” Isobel asked, raising onto her knees and straddling him as she’d done earlier. “Because I think, for now, it might be fun to distract you with other things.”

Four
    I sobel woke as the sun was beginning to cast a corona around the edges of the heavy floor-length drapes at the window. For a moment she was disoriented, but soon remembrance flooded her mind. She lay motionless next to Ethan’s sleeping body, listening to his steady breathing, reveling in the warmth that radiated from him. Wow, she thought, that had been quite a night. Who would have thought that Mr. Buttoned-Up would be quite so skilled in the bedroom? She smiled to herself. It was true what they said. It was the quiet ones you had to watch.
    Her body still tingled and she felt wonderfully alive. Last night had been special. Very special. She turned her head on the pillow and looked at Ethan in the half light. His beard had grown, dusting his jaw with an even darker haze than had been apparent at dinner. That, and his mussed-up hair, made him look more untamed and approachable than he’d been before. It was as if he was two people. A public, reserved Ethan and a private one. She liked that she’d gotten a chance to spend time with both.
    Her fingers itched to reach out and touch him. To awaken him both mentally and physically. But caution stilled her hand. If she was going to leave, best to leave now, while he was still sleeping. That way, they could avoid the awkward goodbye that would come after she told him she’d rather not keep in touch. She wasn’t prepared to invest time into any type of commitment. It wasn’t her way. And this guy, well, he had commitment written all over him. In fact, she didn’t doubt that she’d been an aberration for him.
    She slid carefully from the bed and found her dress and shoes on the floor at the end of the bed. Her panties were a lost cause, she decided, after silently scanning the carpet for a minute. Besides, she had clean pairs in her pack. Giving a mental shrug, she held her things to her and carefully made her way to the door, thanking the efficiency of modern maintenance that the door opened and closed silently, allowing her to exit the bedroom without making a sound.
    In the main room she located her pack behind the sofa where Ethan had left it last night and quickly got dressed. She’d give just about anything for a hot shower and a toothbrush right now, but she didn’t want the sound of running water to wake Ethan. Now that she’d made her decision to cut and run, she didn’t want anything to stand in her way. Not even the man who’d ensured she’d enjoyed what had unarguably been the best sex of her entire life.
    Her inner muscles clenched on the memory of the pleasure he’d wrung from her. No hit and miss with him. She smiled. No, he was hit after hit every time. A girl could get addicted to that, could want to hang around for more of the same. She reminded herself that she wasn’t the hanging-around type. Not for any reason, and certainly not for a man. She was a wanderer through and through, with little to call her own aside from what she could carry in her pack.
    Ethan had talked about a family business, relatives that he worked with and spent time with every day. She couldn’t imagine an existence more different from her own. No, there was no room for commitment in her life, and no place for some as impermanent as her in his.
    Isobel threaded the straps of her shoes through the fingers of one hand while hoisting her pack over one shoulder with the other. She turned to blow a silent kiss in the direction of Ethan’s bedroom. It had certainly been fun while it lasted.
    In the